The Learner

By  Muhsin Ibrahim & Habibu Ma’aruf muhsin2008@gmail.com As 2023 draws to a close, the closure of Kano Filmhouse Cinema is one of Kannywood’s most regrettable events in the outgoing year. Consequently, there was a significant decline in the number of cinematic releases. Nevertheless, amid this setback, a silver lining emerged as it spurred a notable shift towards series films, with prominent producers and directors venturing into the evolving market. From  Labarina ,  Alaqa , and  Manyan Mata  to  Fatake ,  Amaryar Tiktok  and  Gidan Sarauta , Kannywood’s audience has been captivated by numerous enthralling TV and web series. While the series market faces criticism for potentially fostering second-rate productions, the following list highlights the best seven series films aired in the year. Please note that the numbering is not hierarchical.  1. Labarina Labarina  stands out as a household name among Hausa film enthusiasts. Desp...

By Muhsin Ibrahim Hadiza Gabon is in the spotlight today. I find most of the criticisms of  Gabon's Room Talk Show  amusing for three reasons. As you know, Rakiya Moussa, as a guest, emotionally shed tears when talking about her unrequited love experience. Some critics  blamed the presenter, Hadiza, for that. 1. Some of these critics don't know better about journalism ethics than Hadiza because they aren't journalists and have little or nothing to do with the profession. We just love bashing Kannywood people. They don't know how to do anything! 2. Talk shows like that don't have cut-and-dried rules. Gabon is a big fan of Ellen DeGeneres and her popular show. You don't have to be a journalist to host a programme like this. It's almost the same pattern globally. 3. The Internet has radically deregulated journalism and changed the entertainment industries and cultural production. Thus, even if there were rules guiding talk shows like Gabon's, she is free to...

Habibu Ma'aruf habibumaaruf11@gmail.com   The year 2022 has not been great for the Kannywood film industry. There was a substantial decline in feature film production as the popularity of series films soared, piquing the interest of more producers. Cinematic releases were at a premium throughout the year, with just nine films, making it a ratio of less than one release a month. The situation was so severe that no major production was shown at cinemas, even during the Eid ul-Fitr festivities. However, while some of the few releases fell flat on their faces, others have managed to make it in the trying year. Find below the top 5 Kannywood films of 2022. Please note that only feature films were considered for this list. Aisha Directed by Hafizu Bello, the movie, Aisha , is critically and commercially successful. It beats Kayi Nayi (Dir, Gumzak 2021) to become Kannywood’s biggest grosser by earning over ₦5.5 million during its elongated run in two cinemas. This is not su...

The article was written by Muhsin Ibrahim & Habibu Ma'aruf for, and published by, the BBC Hausa service. Here is a link to a slightly different Hausa version published on their webpage:  Finafinan Kannywood mafiya shahara a 2021. We are yet again at the end of another year, 2021. Kannywood has seen so many good and bad events in the year. Prominent are; the demise of the veteran actress Zainab Booth and that of seasoned cameraman-cum-actor, Ahmad Aliyu Tage and Sani Garba SK. Also, a famous actress, Maryam Yahaya, suffered from a protracted illness; the conflicts between Adam Zango and his mentee, Ummi Rahab, and between Umma Shehu and the Kano State Hisba and some directors and the Kano censorship board. On the other hand, the industry has gotten a new cinema to screen its movies, and Netflix Naija contacted its stakeholder for a potential deal. Moreover, the rising stars; Garzali Miko, Zahra Diamond and Maryam Waziri have all tied the knot in the outgoing year. Despite the T....

Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com University of Cologne   The article was written for, and published by, the BBC Hausa service. Here is a link to a slightly different Hausa version published on their webpage:  Fina-finan Kannywood mafiya shahara a shekarar 2020. The year 2020 is unlike any other in recent history. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world. We now have lockdown in countries; we also have to keep social distancing, wear a facemask, among other protocols. The virus batters the entertainment industries from Los Angeles to Lagos, Mumbai to Mombasa, Cairo to Kano, forcing several cinemas to shut down. Thus, shooting and showing films had to stop. Nevertheless, that boosts TV and video on demand (VoD) content and opens a gate for new ‘genres’ of YouTube series and serials. In northern Nigeria, these include Kwana Casa’in , Gidan Badamasi , Labarina , Izzar So , A Duniya , Na Ladidi , among many others. Kannywood began the year auspiciously with a box-offi...

  Nollywood Movie Review: VOICELESS   Director: Robert O. Peters Producer: Rogers Ofime Company: Native Media Writer: Jennifer Agunloye Year: November 18, 2020 Cast: Asabe Madaki, Yakubu Muhammad, Sani Muazu, Uzee Usman, Abba Zaki, Rakiya Atta, introducing Adam Garba, others.    Indisputable, only a few Kannywood productions attract the attention of the audience these days. Although the dialogue track and the actors in Voiceless are Hausa, the film does not belong to Kannywood. The movie, on the one hand, mounts a frigging assault, on the other hand, a serious challenge, to Kannywood. Though it’s unfair to match the glory of Nollywood and that of Kannywood, I can feel it in my bones that they must envy Nollywood for punching them and knocking their teeth out by producing the first wholly Hausa film that is now sold to Netflix. Here’s my review of the film.   Voiceless is an insurgency-inspired romantic-thriller motivated by the infamous ...

It is no longer news that the coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives and the world in general. The virus has already killed more than a million people and rendered tens of thousands others jobless. The tragic stories about the pandemic are numerous. There was a palpable fear for Africa, the most challenged continent on earth. Some analysts projected that there would be corpses littering African streets. However, the embattled continent, so far, fares much better than the rest, including Europe and North America. Likewise, some African filmmakers have not closed shop because of COVID-19. They, amazingly, do even better than ever. The makers of a Kannywood YouTube series, titled Izzar So , are some of these lucky lots.   Kannywood, the largely Hausa film industry, barely survives amidst a myriad of problems from within and outside. The biggest of them all is, perhaps, the collapse of the CD/DVD market in Kano and other northern Nigerian states. Recently, they started trying o...

Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com   After breakfast on the morning of November 2, 2020, I turned on my phone’s Wi-Fi. I received several notifications from my email and social media accounts, particularly WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter. Thanks to End SARS protest, I have been unusually active on Twitter recently. It’s more engaging and has become the battleground for socio-political, cultural and religious battle among Nigerians. However, the End SARS protest heightened this debate, especially between northerners and southerners who, arguably, differ on the issue. Unlike the previous days, today’s top trending topics are not about SARS at all. They are about a Kannywood star, Rahama Sadau. Although she’s not new to controversies, that of today is, I must say, provocative. It led to the creation of incendiary hashtags such as “Assistant Allah.”   Ms Sadau, this time, shared her photos on Instagram and Twitter the night before. She wears a tight, backless long sleeve...

Gidan Badamasi : A Short Review of the Hausa Sitcom   Premiered in 2019, the defining criterion for the popular sitcom, Gidan Badamasi , is comedy. However, it tells much more such as several socio-moral lessons. That is not a surprise as Kannywood, the film industry whose members wrote, produced, directed and acted in Gidan Badamasi , are known for promoting such causes. An oft-repeated raison dêtre of Kannywood, some of its members argue, is to teach morality, promote Hausa culture and Islam, among other related goals. Whether or not they do that is debatable and, of course, outside the scope of this short review. The title, Gidan Badamasi [ Badamasi’s House ], implies where the drama takes place – the house of Alhaji Badamasi. He is a wealthy, wheelchair-bound businessman who had multiple marriages from which he got several children. As he ages, becomes more frail and sickly, he asks most of them – he doesn’t know all of them – to come for a crucial meeting. After their ar...

By Abubakar Isah Baba The article  named above was written by Muhsin Ibrahim, and published in the 2019/2020 edition of KAKAKI: Journal of English and Literary Studies ; (11) 81 - 98.   The first time I watched the drama Dadin Kowa I felt at ease, for it is highly natural, exciting and yet unusual. The soap opera displays the quintessence of Hausa cultural mores; the fictional town of Dadin Kowa reveales the typical, densely populated urban area, mainly crowded with dirty, run-down housing, poverty and social disarray of the Hausa people. There you watch actors as if in reality, mingle with the stray of goats, sheep and chickens. All these are what make the soap opera attractive for it brings the truth before our eyes. Dadin Kowa is enriched with compelling and relevant topics that are within the present condition of its setting, such as insurgency, drug abuse, domestic violence, Almajirci , girl-child education, to name but a few. This is, perhaps, w...

No film was released this Eid for obvious reasons, of course! Last year’s Eid saw the release of the Hausa film KARKI MANTA DA NI . This is my short review of the film.   The movie, Kar Ki Manta Da Ni  is an intense love story presented in the style of the Indian romantic drama films. This is not a surprise, looking at the career of the film’s director, Ali Nuhu, who is well known for making Indianized Hausa films. Like in one of the ‘whiz kid’ director’s previous flicks, particularly Ni Da Ke Mun Dace , the male lead of this film is a musician who sings, plays instruments and always carries a guitar on his back. This is a typical romantic hero portrayal in Indian cinema.   The storyline focuses on Nasir (Shamsu Dan’iya) and his love, Fatima (Maryam Booth). They are genuinely in love with each other, but as Nasir doesn’t have enough to get married, he loses her to a wealthy scion Isma’il (Umar M. Sharif). Consequently, Nasir resorts to drugs, turning his highly pr...

Director :         Yaseen Auwal Producer :       Rahama Sadau & Sadiq Sani Sadiq Language :      Hausa Year :               2020 Company :      Sadau Pictures and Asmasan Pictures Cast:             Sadiq Sani Sadiq, Tahir I. Tahir, Rabi’u Rikadawa, Adam A. Zango, Rahama Sadau, Hadiza Blell, Umar Gombe, etc. So far, only very few successful titles in Kannywood have become franchises. Besides Adam A. Zango’s Basaja , I can only mention Yaseen Auwal’s Mati character. While the former deals with financial rickety in an urban, techno-scientific setting, the latter is a social drama in a rural setting in the past. The chronicle of Mati began with Wani Gari , then Mati da Lado and now Mati a Zazzau . If the filmmaker had foreseen where the ...

For about three decades, cinemagoers, especially in the northern parts of Nigeria, are familiar with Hausa Film Industry popularly known as Kannywood. Though there has been debate on a different genre of movies by section of producers and directors that say 70% of Kannywood filmmakers go for romantic melodrama and musical extravaganza while the rest of the percentage has comedy, action and epic storyline. Be it as it may, the giant industry lacks fantasy movies in its library. Falalu A Dorayi, undoubtedly one of the few directors who believe in game-changing and twisting story background to please his followers and fans, who established himself as a successful filmmaker in the history of Kannywood has finally come with a sensational fantasy flick entitled Karamin Sani . Karamin Sani , an upcoming movie set to hit screens on Friday, 17 January 2020, in Filmhouse Cinema Kano and KFA Cinemas Kaduna simultaneously, was produced by S & B Production and directed by the versa...

Director :         Falalu A. Dorayi Producer :       Isah A. Isah Language :       Hausa Year :               2018 Company :      TJ Multipurpose Concept Cast:              Isah A. Isah, Sadiq Sani Sadiq, Abba El-Mustapha, Amude Booth, Maryam CTV, Maryam Gidado, etc. At the time when most Kannywood films are either an overblown rehash of the industry's previous or impoverished replication of Indian movies, comes a determined film with a squarely original story from the same industry entitled Uwata ce . The film shows  quite  an extraordinary, scandalous saga between a mother and her grown-up children. Hajiya (Maryam CTV) is an older widow with two sons and two daughters all of whom are married, leaving her together with her stepson, a 22-year-old Salim...

By Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com University of Cologne The article was written for, and published by, the BBC Hausa service. Here is a link to a slightly different Hausa version published on their webpage:  Fina-finan Kannywood 10 da suka shahara a 2019. The Hausa film industry alias Kannywood is still alive and, well, kicking. Perhaps known to many people, the industry’s survival is against many odds. Now and again, Kannywood is caught up in scandals. Prominent among them this year include the way politics divided it and brought sharp disunity among its members. Then, two leading actresses fought and the clip of the fight went viral; the arrest of a celebrated director, the sartorial choice of two more actresses invited them condemnations, insults and curses, among other incidents.   Copyright: @officialkannywood Admittedly, I did not watch some films that might be among the top 10 of 2019. I don’t live in Nigeria to go to the only functi...

Production :    Maishadda Investment Ltd. Producer:        Abubakar Bashir Maishadda Director :         Ali Nuhu Year:               2019 Cast :         Umar M. Shareef, Hassana Muhammad, Maryam Yahaya, Ali Nuhu, Yakubu Muhammad, Jamila Nagudu and others. Like most, nay all, films titled after a central character, HAFEEZ revolves around the life of a spoilt adult (acted by Umar M. Shareef). Also, the film has the mark of its “Wizkid” director, Ali Nuhu, all over, for it is apparently modelled after a boy-meets-girl, rich-boy vs poor-girl Bollywood paradigms. Moreover, it bears many more Indian filmic signatures such as five or six spectacular song and dance routines, among others. Perhaps the recent warning  by the MOPPAN President, Kabiru Maikaba, on banning romance film in Kannywood came out ...

Director :         Ali Gumzak Producer :       Sani Mai Iyali Story:              Ibrahim Birniwa Year :               2018 Company :      Famli Investment Ltd. Cast :               Maryam Gidado, Ali Nuhu, Sadiq Sani Sadiq, Nuhu Abdullahi, Lawan Ahmad, Isah Feruzkhan, others. A couple of days ago, a UN report showed that men outnumber women in Nigeria. Several people, especially on social media, disputed the data, saying that women are way more than men. True or not, Ali Gumzak-directed film, Tangaran seems to have slightly corroborated the claim as three guys jostle to tie the knot with a beautiful damsel while she chases two others. Although not a focus of this review, this portrayal is arguably not the...